


Trail of Crimson

by PinkSugarCrystal



Category: Dune - All Media Types, Dune Sequels - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson, Prelude to Dune - Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson & Stephen Youll
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dune Setting, An Unexpected Journey, Computers, Confused Behavior, Domination, Drug Use, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Sexual Content, Father-Son Relationship, Hate Sex, Human, Human Computer, Logic, Love, Love/Hate, M/M, Male Slash, Master/Servant, Mentat, POV Third Person, Prequel, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Robot, Robot Sex, Science, Science Fiction, Sex, Sexual Confusion, Teaching, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 01:24:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12201180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkSugarCrystal/pseuds/PinkSugarCrystal
Summary: A story concerned with the relationship of the feared sentient robot Erasmus and his too-be Mentat pupil, Gilbertus Albans.When Gilbertus, a curious, precocious individual, is unexpectedly removed from his slave pen and taken under the wing of the intelligent, superior Erasmus, the two cultivate a relationship fueled by both hate and love, in an attempt to train Gilbertus to think like a supercomputer.Rated E for Explicit Sexual Content, Grisly Violence, Nudity, Drug Use, and Brief Strong Language.





	Trail of Crimson

**I was not able to find any fanfiction involving Erasmus or Gilbertus, a robot and his Mentat pupil from _Dune: Machine Crusade_ , so after some brainstorming and constant re-writes, I just decided to write the first one, myself. This story contains content that would in no way be in the actual books, including sexual relations (which’ll be later in the story) and other mature themes. This won’t be a long story, but it’ll still be updated quite a bit along with my Clone Ways fanfic _Rebels of the Underground_. Still, I hope you enjoy, and forgive me for ruining the precious canon. This story does not necessarily focus on the politics of Machine Crusade, but instead the said relationship above. You have been warned.**

**Also, dear God I’m sorry I’ve written this. This is probably going to offend a bunch of Dune fans.**

**CHAPTER 1~The Thinking Machine**

They were all huddled close together and shuddering like the leaves of an aspen tree in the approaching Fall, their half-naked bodies clinging together with dirty, sticky skin and hair that fell down their sullied faces in clumped, oily tendrils. These were their homes: small, unclean pens located in the property of an ostentatious, vernacular abode that belong to of high superiority. Some may have said they were lucky. They were able to be alive in these times of war and political turmoil instead of being caught in hot, nearly-destroyed planets and blown into smithereens, but those who spoke in such a way never saw the conditions these slaves thrived in. Most of lost hope, they fought to stay alive every day, for a small glint of optimism that there would be a better future for themselves and their children.

At this given moment, fright filled them all to their very core. Locked secure in their pens, the sound of footsteps, quiet yet reverberating in their ears, filled the room. They came ever so slowly, as if the feet creating them belonged to an individual whose existence was to cause misery among them. There was little truth behind that statement, but the individual currently walking amongst their pens was one who took avid pleasure in seeing them slowly deteriorate in both physical and mental nature. Standing 7’, cloaked in a crimson and silver robe, and wielding a small yet powerful pistol within his metalloid fingers, Erasmus was their sole owner, and he saw them as both mere insects and guinea pigs for his experiments on the study pertaining to human behavior and nature. What the sentient robot had witnessed and discovered had fascinated him, but overtime began to both bore and disgust him, and as the experiments grew awry the lives of his captives began a steady decline.

As he was here now, their primal fears had returned more than before. The smell of urine and shit soon permeated the room, mingling with sweat and a cacophony of quiet whimpers and weeps. The robot ignored their emissions and continued his quiet walk down the path in the middle, peeking into each pen with a stoic look on his face. Normally, he would occasionally clink his gun against his inner thigh as a way to frighten the captives, startling the ones near him. This game for him never got old, and he would chuckle at their reactions before making his way to inspection. However, today was much different that his usual “visits”, and it appeared that he was looking for something…or someone.

All huddling close to the wall, he merely glanced at them all before continuing his way down. He continued to do so for a while, occasionally turning his head when the rats skitted along the floor, their claws digging into the cement earth. The noise soon became grating on him, and he eventually picked up on one the rats and slaughtered it with a single hand, his flow-metal palms crushing into their bones and ending their lives promptly. He dropped the bloody, fragmented carcass on the floor for the other rodents to feast on while he continued his search. A nearby young female repressed her squeal and watched in avid curiosity as the puddle of blood beneath the rodent grew.

The automaton eventually reached the near-end of the pens, peeking in with the same stoicism and fierceness as he did the others until he saw just what he was looking for. There, sitting near the door of the pen, was a little boy of age nine. He looked up at the robot with a mixture of fright and keen curiosity, his watery blue eyes remained fixated on Erasmus’ optics. His curly blonde hair sprang in different directions, some of it pulled into a ponytail. A woman, who couldn’t have possibly be the boy’s mother, was firmly grasping onto the child’s arm, in a feeble attempt to pull himself against the wall away from their stall door. However, she had obviously not been given enough time, as she lay frozen against the wall while remaining grasped to the boy’s arm, who was obviously trying to pull himself away.

Erasmus smiled perniciously, almost exposing teeth. This was the one he was looking for, and the crestfallen look on the woman’s face showed that she realized the boy was the robot’s intention of coming here.

The automaton unlocked their pen door and brought his lithe, muscular arm to the boy’s hand, before bringing him up to his feet and pulling the boy towards his body, having him stand by his side. At that abrupt moment, the woman began to howl and ran over toward her son. Erasmus caught onto her sudden movements and pulled his pistol out of a pocket in his cloak, promptly aiming it at her head and pulling the trigger. A sound of rolling thunder resounded throughout the room, accompanied by a woman’s scream as she fell over onto the cement ground. Blood, broken bone, and tissue spilled onto the earth and flew onto the robot’s body and cloak.

She was as good as dead, and now the sound of the gun and the fresh coppery scent of blood roused the other captives, some of them screaming in rage and fright. Irritated and amused, Erasmus aimed his gun at a furious, elderly male slave and shot two rounds into his chest. An explosion of blood and organic matter flew from his abdomen and onto the other captives that shared his living quarters. Some promptly became quiet, but others continued to weep and scream. He emptied more rounds into the vocal ones and was rewarded with blood and masses of bone matter flying upon him, coating his shiny, flow-metal body in their grimy viscera. He was enjoying this, but he couldn’t waste any more time among them.

When most of the captives reduced themselves down once again to quiet whimpers and choking sobs, Erasmus placed his gun back within his cloak and pulled the boy out of the stall-house. To his surprise, the boy had not made a sound during the whole ordeal, but only stared in shock as the robot massacred his way back into the warm sunshine, which greeted them as if nothing awful had just happened moments ago. Erasmus smiled as the rays hit his cloak, penetrating his flow-metal skin and heating him to the core. He gave a mechanical purr of comfort and ushered the boy with a small shake of his arm, leading him to his abode on his estate.

As they walked over to it, the boy began to weep quietly.

“I am not going to hurt you, young human,” was the robot’s reply to the boy’s reaction. “Come, help me wash this organic matter off of me, and I shall tell you why I have brought you with me.”

The boy sniffed and restrained his tears and whimpers as they entered Erasmus’ immense domicile, incredibly spacious and comfortable looking, decorated by one with an acute sense of luxury. The doors behind them automatically shut, and Erasmus led the boy up a flight of massive, marble stairs located in the center of the room, the footsteps of the robot giving off an eerie ambiance to an otherwise normally silent residence. The boy looked around in awe—never before in his life had he seen such luxury before. Of course, most of his life had been locked away in those pens or in the decrepit, marshy area around its perimeter, and seeing all this alarmed and frightened him.  Without thinking, he squeezed his hand tighter into Erasmus’ secure grasp. The robot felt the boy’s heartrate increase and his anxiety growing by the minute, attempting to hide it by distracting himself by the unfamiliar, avant-garde decorum. Erasmus let the boy clutch at him harder as they made their way up the staircase and down an immaculate, marbled hallway decorated with innovative statues and alien artwork.

The boy looked at the morbid art pieces with wonder before being pulled through two white, double-doors. Before he knew it, he was standing in a well-appointed, light blue bathe room being swiftly disrobed by Erasmus’ nimble figures. The boy shuddered and looked down upon his naked form.

His body was splattered with blood, flesh, and bone marrow, and the stained, crimson pile of his normally-brown rags shown that imprints had sunk right through to his legs, and his naked chest had been hit with sprays of gore. He began to cry again as the robot filled the tub with hot water, picking up the naked boy securely under his arms and carefully depositing him into the bubbling water. The boy felt the urge to run, but he saw the robot’s gun chinking within his robe, and he knew Erasmus was much faster than he. The clean scent of the water was soon filling his senses, but out of instinct, found himself pressing against the back of the tub, tucking his still-stained legs to his belly and chest.

Erasmus saw his swift reaction and merely frowned, raising himself from his squatting position over the faucet and removed his robe, dripping with copious bodily fluids. He rolled it up neatly in his hands, spreading blood across both his arms like a large paintbrush, before he gently set it aside on a towel. The boy couldn’t help but stare at him. Now that they were both completely naked and covered in the same substances, he felt the primal fears begin to fade and instead be replaced with a slow-growing anger, carefully aerating to the surface.

Once the tub was mostly full, the robot switched off the faucet and lowered himself into the water. Remaining taciturn, the water rose to a high level, just below the boy’s chin, who turned to look away from the Erasmus. The robot sensed his anger, and tactfully handed the boy a towel to scrub himself with. The boy did so, his bottom lip slowly going under hit top one and his eyes once again watering up. He continued crying, but silently, watching as the teardrops splashed delicately into the bathwater.

Erasmus kept his eyes on the boy as he started washing the corporeal matter off his chest. “I have states previously that I am not to hurt you, young human.”

“You already have,” the boy murmured, watching particles of flesh that were not his own begin to pry away from his body. He trembled.

“Do you not have a curiosity of why you are here with me, in the same bathtub as I?”

“Of course I do!” the boy spat. “But you’re expecting me to not pretend I just witnessed you massacre a whole group of people, including my step-mom? Isn’t that one of the reasons why I’m in the bathtub with you?”

The robot remained silent for a moment, and the boy clenched. He felt he had just angered the Erasmus, but felt he did not care. However, instead, Erasmus regarded his statement and replied to him in a tone of stimulated calmness.

“You are acting strangely tranquil for a boy covered in his own step-mother’s organics, as well as those of brethren. I have noticed something about you, young human.”

“And that’s what?” the boy asked virulently.

Erasmus arched his back against the faucet, crossing hid arms above his now clean chest.

“I noticed you were a lot different that your slave peers. You are rebellious and wild, yet you regard beings like me and other thinking machines with an avid curiosity instead of fear or indifference. Have you ever thought that you look at the world and react to it in a different way than most other beings of your species do?”

“N-no. I don’t…I don’t know what you mean or what you’re talking about.”

“That’s because you are young, and don’t understand yourself, yet.”

“And you expect me to believe that you understand me well?”

The automaton tittered and began to laugh. “In all admittance, it is hard for somebody outside your race to understand your arbitrary behavior. I have conducted experiments for years and most end in futile and confusion on my part. I regard myself as quite observant and intelligent, young human. I am a thinking machine. However, I attempt to look at all that is organic and inorganic as if each and every member of both classes belongs in a system—as most of them possess and belong in one. However, your race seems too muddled and distracted to be following some sort of course or laws of nature. Although…I have been taking notes on your behavior, young human, and I see a fascinating pattern of how you react to what’s around you and your emotional displays toward them.”

“So you’ve…spied on me?” the boy asked, now looking at the droid in fright, his eyes widening.

“Spying is for those trying to collect and report information to an upper divisionary of an enemy. Consider what I have done research out of eager curiosity.”

“That’s weird. You’re wasting your time, robot.”

Erasmus felt affronted. “We all have our habits and idiosyncrasies, young human. You are with me now because I’m interested in you. I am not to hurt you, but to house you here, within my abode.”

“But why?” the boy hastily asked. “Do you actually care for me?”

“You could say that,” Erasmus confided gleefully, grabbing the rag again and continuing his ministrations on his abdomen and below. “As I have said, young human, you are different and you have the potential to think logically. You do not believe me, but I know a lot more about you than you realize.”

The boy broke out of his fetal position against the back of the tub, looking at the robot with a fierce mix of many emotions. He didn’t understand the automaton’s behavior one bit, nor did he understand the reasoning behind his actions. It was as if the automaton, himself did not know what he was doing, but deep inside, the boy had a feeling he truly did know, and that he was right about the robot truly not knowing himself. The boy was now frightened that the malevolent figure, whom he always feared, was now showing interest in him and treating him hospitably, but both passively and aggressively.

The robot suddenly began laughing again. “You’re thinking about everything I’ve said to you, and are trying to insert reasoning behind it. Do many children your age do that?”

The boy remained silent and continued to scrub blood off his body, digging fiercely into the spots that were stained with a darker crimson. The robot continued brushing the rag against his thigh, until the boy suddenly stood up and brought his own rag to the automaton’s neckline, scouring it hard enough that the robot might feel a mild discomfort. Erasmus simply sat there nonchalantly, waiting patiently as the boy finished rubbing the profuse strands of tissue off his breast before grasping the thin layer of matter between two fingers and flinging it into a nearby garbage disposal. The boy then sat down and got back to work on his own body. Erasmus simply sat there and pondered over the boy’s behavior, before the organic looked at him in the eyes and smiled defiantly.

“You’re thinking about why I cleaned you, and are trying to insert reasoning behind why I would even bother to do so,” the boy mumbled before turning away.

Once they had finished, Erasmus pulled the drain and stepped out of the tub, dripping cerise droplets onto the towel below. The boy simply sat in the punch-colored water, watching in morbid fascination and disgust as the strands of human matter and rivulets of blood were slowly sucked into the drain like party streamers. The robot disposed of his dirty robe inside a hamper and replenished himself with a new one, this time white and much thinner than the previous. He buttoned it with sprightly fingers before handing a similar number to the boy, who slowly gripped it as if it were tainted with rat poison. He dressed himself in the comfortable attire and stood there, watching Erasmus as he worked irritably on one spot of his prominent cheek, standing in front of a grandiose mirror and closely inspecting the spot. The boy attempted to walk, but because the robe was designed for a robot over 7’ and not a small boy yet to reach puberty, he continued to stumble and nearly collapse onto the wet floor.

After another feeble attempt, the robot finally picked him up with little effort and carried him in his arms, supporting the boys buttocks with one arm and resting his hand in the boy’s golden hair, gently keeping him across his chest as he walked out of the bathroom and head down the end of the hallway, where a good-sized, red recliner resided. Erasmus walked over to it and sat down gently, rearranging the boy so that his legs dangled off to the side the chair’s armrest. The boy, much to his surprised, complied, and rested his dripping head sleepily against the robot’s warm, exposed chest. His body still remained tense, but he still let the robot keep his arm resting across his leg.

“I don’t want tomorrow to ever happen…” the boy whispered sleepily, closing his eyes, savoring the evening splaying across them both. “I’m scared…”

“You mustn’t think that way,” Erasmus said, staring straight down the quiet hallway. “You think I’m malevolent, but you don’t know how much I care for you right now.”

“I don’t know if I believe you…”

“That’s expected, but you’ll realize it soon enough. This is your home now, young human.”

The boy sharply exhaled, and the robot relaxed his hand in the boy’s wet locks, delicately twisted a finger through the fine protein organics. As wet and greasy as the boy’s hair had been, it still felt terribly soft and warm against his metal digits.

“This isn’t right,” the boy sighed. Erasmus simply caressed the boy’s back and cooed gently in his ear, preening the boy’s hair with his dexterous fingertips, lightly pulling out the excess strands and rocking him gently in his lap. He could now sense the boy was absolutely terrified. Too sleepy to fight or think clearly, his muscles were tense and contorted, even more disturbed by the fact that this robot, with whom he was familiar with his harsh forbearing’s upon he and others of the lower servant caste, was now cradling him gently in his strong, metallic arms.

It was at that moment the boy realized Erasmus had never put him through harsh comportments before. Never scolded or hurt him in any way—but whether that was because the robot was always fond of him or never caught him attempting to escape from his view whenever he approached he didn’t know, but his chest felt crumpled and his stomach remained tight.

He couldn’t fathom that he wasn’t dreaming, but this was the cold reality—and it had all happened in just a span of a few hours. No warning, no prognosticating, no foreshadowing…it all just happened in a flash, and here he was, on the lap of feared Erasmus.

Before he fell asleep in the arms of the robot, he truly wondered if he was better off than those slaves of the lower caste.


End file.
